Attempts to Censor AntiPolygraph.org
antipolygraph.org
antipolygraph.org
The show was recently cancelled because someone who was on the show committed suicide. This was clearly because of a false lie detector result which said he cheated on his partner.
In all the media frenzy around the incident, I didn't see a single source mention that lie detectors are unproven bullshit. I don't understand how otherwise normal people believe we live in a world where reliable lie detectors exist (the effects of this would of course be world changing).
I've had the radio on for the last2-3 weeks and the BBC have been constantly saying that lie detectors are flawed and that the producers of the show apparently weren't even aware of this fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Scott_Amedure
In a way, you get the sense that these shows operate with the understanding that dead bodies are known to be a non-zero quantity, given the subject matter of taunting people on camera, such that they get their reputation thrown permanently into a relativistic black hole from which it will never escape.
As for gullible people eating up lie detector results, as the saying goes, I don't have to outrun the bear... I only have to outrun you.
Which is to say, it doesn't matter if you have firm grounds to disbelieve the lie detector test. I only have to convince your dimwitted peers, who are just itching for a reason to hang you. And as is evident, these TV shows prey on the slower people who simply need to see an interesting instrument and a convincing astrologer inspecting the dowsing rods.
Here in the United States, there's a subtle hint that lie detectors are all but tea leaves: They are inadmissible as evidence in a legal context. As a rule of law, no judge will tolerate the results being used as proof of a fact.
With a wink and a nod, this is how one is to clued into their actual value. But that's it. No one will accept the idea that they're worthless. They only point out legal inadmissibility as a point of trivia, and then move right along with whatever else they had to say.
"Oh, his heart rate jumped when I asked what the end score was in the game he said he saw in his home at the time of the murder even though he gave the correct score maybe he guessed."
If you get angry, it will "measure" that too, as a lie. Or if you get embarrassed, that "measures" as a lie. My grandma would have failed any cheater polygraph test horribly, as she turned red every time anybody mentioned anything related to sex in general. You could have asked her if somebody she never heard of had extramarital sex, and her answer, no matter what she said, would have showed up as a lie every time.
Physical or psychological exhaustion change the "results", too, of course. Or if you sit next to a window and the test takes long enough so that you start when you still sit in the shades but later the sun comes around and you sit in the light, that can be enough, too.
Or if you deliberately clench your anal sphincter, that's enough to change results. And yes, that actually works; that's why some lie detectors now feature ass-clenching detention technology.
This is one of the most entertaining sentences I've ever read on this website.
>In 2003, Gary Ridgway admitted he was the Green River Killer, having murdered 49 women in the Seattle area. Ridgway had passed a lie detector test in 1987, while another man - who turned out to be innocent - failed.
What relationship—if any—those have to the truthfulness of a person at any given moment, remains debatable at best.
No correlation exists.
Dunno how true this is and haven't heard of this trick elsewhere, though admittedly I haven't researched the topic. Other techniques in the ‘Little Brother’ books are real, apart from two or three that are doubtful to me.
I once went through a polygraph and used my meditative breathing techniques to calm my mind, and failed the test because I was "controlling my breath".
Lie detectors are basically like one of those body language tells. They don't tell you if someone is lying, but they can give you a hint as to how someone is feeling that might be useful in deciding what lines of questioning to pursue further.
Of course, polygraphs don’t guide toward lies specifically, just toward uncomfortable subjects—which is why you hear about e.g. TSA screeners demanding to know if you were cheating on your wife, when that has nothing to do with things the TSA could care about. Whether or not they’re using a polygraph, the interrogation process involves digging for upsetting subjects; and so, if you have something upsetting you unrelated to the case at hand, they have to “dig it up” to “weed it out” of the interrogation, i.e. to put the way you’re reacting to questions about the subject they do care about in context. A witness who is very nervous because they’re off to visit their mistress, has had their nervousness “explained away”, and so being nervous is no longer suspect. (But other responses, like anger, still are leading. Being an interrogator requires recognizing differences in subtly-triggered emotions, because they usually have different sources. This is why so much was made of the power of “recognizing micro-expressions” back when, before that got mostly debunked.)
And, of course, it’s pretty easy to train someone to control a polygraph signal, and some people are even naturally “immune” to being read by one. Mindfulness meditation works pretty well to defuse most of the physiological responses to stressful stimuli, for example, and interrogators have no idea whether you’re doing it. It works even better—if you’re a professional spy and have some time on your hands—to just sit around hooked up to a polygraph, watching its output yourself, as someone tries to upset you. (The polygraph is, in this case, acting as a https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biofeedback mechanism.)
Still, polygraphs were never intended to aid in the interrogation of professional spies; they were intended to be used like a drug-sniffing dog, to act as a quick heuristic to filter a large pool of “ordinary passers-by” (e.g. in a murder committed in a crowd) down to a few suspects who seem genuinely uncomfortable about something. Since most crimes aren’t committed by sociopaths, or Zen monks, or spies, but rather by people who think they have a momentary opportunity and usually regret their crime somewhat afterward, looking for discomfort tends to be fairly helpful in pre-filtering a large suspect pool; and using a machine that can detect “silent” discomfort is indeed an enhancement to that pre-filtering. (But, again, it’s only a pre filter. It’s a weak heuristic that needs following-up with further interrogation and detective work, to know whether to put these people on an actual suspects list. It’s common, when using such a heuristic, to filter some people in on the first pass, but filter every one of them back out in a second pass, and then realize you have to start from scratch with a different approach.)
And, of course, there are going to be departments who know none of this, whose understanding of the use of a polygraph comes from cop movies, but who go out and buy one anyway, ditch the highly suggested training offered by the manufacturer (or don’t get access to it because they’re buying the device used), and then do stupid pass/fail polygraph “tests” where “passing” the “test” is exclusionary, as if you had a non-matching blood type to the suspect’s blood or something. (And there are also departments who just use a polygraph—real or fake—as a prop to perform “enhanced interrogation.” Interrogation doesn’t need “enhancement” IMHO—it doesn’t even need a stern voice—but at least interrogation with a polygraph-prop isn’t literally a crime and an abridgement of human rights in the way some other “enhancements” are.)
I note that they haven't come up in Love Island yet this year as they normally do, and I suspect they won't.
Because for the better part of a century, the entertainment industry (and Hollywood in particular) has told us they work. They're a central plot device in tens of thousands of books, radio dramas, plays, television shows, and movies.
It's like they say in politics: If you tell a lie enough times, it becomes the truth.
Still hilarious 23 (?) years later, but the laughs are based on the assumption that the device really works that well.
The interrogators will always have props and fake analysis, like a "chair sensor" that can detect you trying to defeat the machine, or eye movement sensor, face reading 'expert', blood patterns they claim disputes your statements, a small wand with decorative LEDs and wires they claim can read chemical traces from your clothing as they wave it around and make a concerned face looking at a switched off laptop screen afterwards, or a fake phone on the desk "We've just learned your accomplice has been arrested and is in the next room making a deal, are you sure you don't want to change your story?". The Chicago Police are famous for arresting groups of people, and taking photos of one of them signing some kind of property release waiver, then presenting the photos to the other suspects claiming they have been snitched on.
The most critical part of the interrogation with a polygraph is in the middle of the test where they switch off the machine and then continue to interrogate you "Let's just talk freely". Classic interrogation tricks (that still work), nothing more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJ5aIvjNgao
There they queue up a photocopier with "true", "true", and "false" prior to asking questions.
If it actually works, the photo of Charles Wayne Humble in the article looks like he could lie through his teeth while passing a polygraph exam with flying colors!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arpanet_(The_Americans)
After consulting with Arkady and Oleg, and with the promise of coaching from Oleg, Nina tells Stan that she will take the FBI's polygraph test. Oleg suggests a few techniques including that she visualize him in the room as well as clenching her anus.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3OMSMq9zPA
The Americans Season 2 Episode 7 "Arpanet" Review: "I like when I learn something from an episode, and now I know ..." "If you're having to do a polygraph, squeeze your anus."
https://tv.avclub.com/the-americans-arpanet-1798180091
(One of the ways to beat a polygraph turns out to be clenching one’s anus. This show is full of helpful hints.)
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a28316/spy-on-the-a...
ESQ: The show featured Nina learning to beat and eventually beating a polygraph. How easy is it to do that?
PE: We have a number of real-world instances. The Aldrich Ames case. He went through the polygraph twice, after he went to work for the Soviets. Administering a polygraph is an art, not a science. That's why it's not admitted in court. People have claimed to have had training to beat the polygraph. Everything from tightening your sphincter to breathing a certain way, and so forth.
ESQ: Speaking of sphincters, the trick she's told is "squeeze your anus." Is that a thing?
PE: I can't confirm. [Laughs] I took several polygraphs. Taking them is a standard thing in the intelligence life.
Alternative countermeasures include mental activity (such as thinking exciting thoughts, or doing math in one's head) and tongue-biting.
For more on polygraph countermeasures, see Chapter 4 of The Lie Behind the Lie Detector:
Sounds like that would be a great input device for Affective Computing, Sentiment Analysis, and Targeted Ad Analytics. Maybe Facebook will make one to go with the Oculus some day.
(“Pseudoscientist Attempts to Censor Anti-Lie Detector Website,” in case it gets changed later.)
(2009) antipolygraph.org (first HN submission) - NSA polygraph experiences: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=428489
(2013) WaPo - Man accused of teaching anti-polygraph techniques faces prison https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6308878
(2015) NYT - How to beat a polygraph: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9481385
(2018) Gizmodo - Use of AI lie detector in EU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18351733
(2018) antipolygraph.org - CIA Analyst on polygraph BS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18155548
(2018) antipolygraph.org - book on how to beat polygraphs: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18431683
I wanted to provided the pro-polygraph side of the argument but literally could not find any popular threads in support of that case. Please correct me if anyone can find credible pro polygraph positions.
But you can use techniques to attempt to make them more revealing. The first obvious one is to simply convince people they work, and then use them as a persuasion technique. "Look, do you want to just come clean here or are we going to have to bring out the polygraph?"
The second technique you can use is to ask a series of alternate fact questions and look for response. "Did the murder happen at five o'clock? Did it happen at six o'clock? Did it happen at eight o'clock?" Somebody who is doesn't know the answer isn't going to be any more nervous at any of those questions in particular, but someone who does is often going to have a nervous spike as, or just before, the correct question is asked.
... or once they realize thats the intent of the questions, or when the questioner changes their tone of voice subconsciously, or when they have an intrusive thought etc.